The microcolumn plasmas are driven electrically by unipolar pulses having a rise time of less than 50 ns and widths of 500 ns−16 μs. Pulse voltages as large as 7 kV are available with power supplies custom-designed and built by Dr. Z. Liang.

ARTICLE TITLE

Dynamic plasma/metal/dielectric photonic crystals in the mm-wave region: Electromagnetically-active artificial material for wireless communications and sensors

AUTHORS

Peter P. Sun, Runyu Zhang, Wenyuan Chen, Paul V. Braun and J. Gary Eden

AUTHOR AFFILIATIONS

University of Illinois

From the Journal: Applied Physics Reviews

WASHINGTON, D.C., December 10, 2019 — Scientists at the University of Illinois have created sugar cube-sized blocks of an electromagnetic material with potential to transform communication networks.

Several countries are building futuristic communication systems using higher frequency electromagnetic waves to transfer more data at faster rates, but they have lacked network components to handle these higher bandwidths. Researcher J. Gary Eden proved his new device can rapidly switch functionality to perform the varied tasks needed to support a network with carrier frequencies of over 100 gigahertz. The miniscule-scale architecture concealed within the sugar cube blocks is described in Applied Physics Reviews, from AIP Publishing.